Favorite Quote

“You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.”

Main Idea

One thing, the right thing, will move any endeavor forward at a pace that seems inexplicable.

Review

The One Thing is a simple concept. Few pages in you can understand the book, however The One Thing expands its One idea into a practical almost scientific approach to amazing Time Management. The biggest question we can ask when starting to manage our time in The Magic 3 is WHY. Because if we possess abundant clarity on the purpose of what we are doing, an interesting phenomenon occurs, our to do list starts shrinking on its own. Our initial list of things we had to do, because a list of things we must do, in essence the essence of the project. The One Thing does a fantastic job at this as well, if we are always working on the most important next step, we will avoid a lot of unnecessary items, but more importantly keep moving at a rapid pace.

The greatest concept described in the book, is Geometric Progression inside a business context. Basically, if aligned properly each domino can always take down a domino of equal size indefinitely as you can see in The Guiness World Record Longest Domino Sequence below:

However, The One Thing creates a different Domino effect, an effect that progresses geometrically. While a domino can obviously take down a sibling of its same size it can also take down one which is one and a half times larger. This means that things will quite literally fall into place when we do The One Thing.

Isn’t it great to know that we can change the world one thing at a time? This is part of The Revolution Of Time Management. This is what Archimedes meant when he said:

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

How It Made Me Better

The most exhausting thing throughout the day is switching channels throughout unrelated projects and action items. The sole act of refocusing and restarting in itself is a big waste of time and energy. However, since I started stepping into the office every day, just thinking what is the one thing I can do today that would justify the entire day? Then I started asking the same questions about my weeks, months, years and ultimately life.